On Monday when the launch embargo expired on the Threadripper 2950X and Threadripper 2990WX I hadn't run any gaming benchmarks since, well, most games even on Windows can't scale out to 32 threads let alone 64 threads... Especially on Linux. It's far more practical getting these Threadripper 2 processors if you want to compile with 32 or 64 make jobs -- among many other common multi-threaded Linux workloads -- versus using this $899 or $1799 processor for a Linux gaming system. But if you are curious how Linux games scale with the Threadripper 2950X, here are some benchmark results when testing both AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics.

One of the frequent requests/comments stemming from the launch-day Windows 10 vs. Linux benchmarks on the new AMD Threadripper 2990WX were questions about whether this 32-core / 64-thread processor would do better with Windows Server given Microsoft's obvious tuning of that Windows flavor to high core/thread counts... Well, here are some initial figures with Windows Server 2016 and a Windows Server 2019 preview.

ARM has had a pretty fascinating history, but for most of its time on this Earth it has not been a very public facing company. After the release of the iPhone and ARM’s dominance in the mobile market, they decided to push their PR efforts up a few notches. Now we finally were able to see some of the inner workings of a company that was once a little known low power CPU designer that licensed cores out to third parties.

The company was not always as aggressive as what we are seeing now. The mobile space for a long time was dominated by multiple architectures that all have eventually faded away. ARM held steady with design improvements and good customer relations that ensured that they would continue into the future. After the release of the original iPhone, the world changed. Happily for us, ARM changed as well. In previous years ARM would announce products, but they would be at least three years away and few people took notice of what they were up to. I originally started paying attention to ARM as I thought that their cores might have the ability to power mobile gaming and perhaps be integrated into future consoles so that there would be a unified architecture that these providers could lean upon. This was back when the 3DS and PSP were still selling millions of units.This of course never came to pass as I had expected it to, but at least ARM did make it into the Nintendo Switch. ARM worked hard to quickly put faster, more efficient parts out the door. They also went on a buying spree and acquired several graphics startups that would eventually contribute to the now quite formidable Mali GPU family of products. Today we have an extensive lineup of parts that can be bundled into a tremendous amount of configurations. ARM has a virtual monopoly in the cellphone market because they have been willing to work with anyone who wants to license their designs, technologies, and architectures. This is actually a relatively healthy “monopoly” because the partners do the work to mix and match features to provide unique products to the marketplace. Architectural licensees like Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung all differentiate their products as well and provide direct competition to the ARM designed cores that are licensed to other players.

Somehow ASUS has made the Zephyrus S even slimmer than its predecessors and ASUS claims it is now the worlds thinnest gaming laptop, coming in 14.95mm at its thinnest point. Reducing the thickness while keeping all the components cool proved to be a challenge, though, as ASUS had to redesign its heat pipe configuration from the inside out.

The weight has also been reduced down to an impressive 2.1KG without sacrificing build quality. The lid of the laptop is now made of CNC machined aluminium, which can be time consuming to produce, but it means that even though it’s very thin it retains a lot of strength and a premium feel. Other materials used include zinc alloy hinges and an aluminium & magnesium body.

Announced today, KitGuru gets hands-on with the new Strix Scar II 17.3in gaming laptop. Just ahead of Gamescom 2018, ASUS ROG has announced the latest addition to its laptop family – the Strix Scar II. If you think that sounds familiar, the 15.6in Strix Scar II was announced at Computex 2018. The model we are looking at today is the 17.3in version, complete with a 3ms 144Hz display.

Today we will be taking a look at the Ultimus RGB keyboard from Cougar. COUGAR ULTIMUS RGB is a keyboard for the committed gamer. With mechanical switches, a fully customizable per-key RGB backlight and one of the sturdiest keyboard designs the world has seen, everything you need to dominate your opponents is here.

You need quick access to all your skills, abilities and commands during the game, and to do so, you need to know where they are. ULTIMUS RGB helps you with that by allowing you to customize its backlight and assign different colors to different commands, and store up to 5 different modes to fulfill your needs in different games. When you don’t need to use specific lighting patterns, you can simply enjoy any of the 14 impressive RGB effects we prepared for you.

Gamdias has added a new mouse to their product line, but this time it is a wireless mouse. The Hades M1 is equipped with wireless functionality, a 10800 DPI optical sensor, dual RGB light streams, two additional side panels grips, and more. It is also supported by the Gamdias HERA software, which allows the user to manage multiple Gamdias peripherals simultaneously. There are also seven programmable buttons and a weight adjustment system for further customization. In this article, Benchmark Reviews will be taking a look at the Hades M1 to see how it compares to the competition.

Upgrading from a hard drive to an Solid-State Drive (SSD) is one of the best ways to boost performance in an aging notebook or desktop PC. At one point in time upgrading to an SSD was a costly venture, but prices have drastically fallen in recent years and can now be done affordably. SATA III SSDs were once the darling of storage industry, but with the advent of PCIe NVMe drives they aren’t being talked about much. PCIe NVMe drives are getting all the headlines these days as they offer the best performance and cable free installation, but SATA III drives are far from being done. SATA drives are great for mainstream users and are often much cheaper as they are becoming a commodity. Moving to an SSD will make your PC more responsive and the faster speeds will improve your productivity.

Today we’ll be looking at the HP SSD S600 2.5″ SATA III drive series. HP has been really making a name for themselves in the SSD market over the past year and the HP S600 was recently launched to cover the entry-level SATA SSD market. The HP SSD S600 is available in just two capacities – 120GB for $35.99 shipped and 240GB for $59.99 shipped. These are rather small capacities in this day and age, but they are super affordable at $0.30 per GB on the 120GB drive and $0.25 per GB on the 240GB drive.

Monster Hunter isn't all that much better than it's always been. It's just so much easier to appreciate now. What once felt like a well-kept secret amongst players with enough time and energy to scale the barriers to entry is now easier for everyone else to enjoy.

This is where I'll keep all of the updates to the article, and bleeding edge information. There's new info and leaks happening constantly right now, so expect it to be updated and changed at a quick pace.

In just a few weeks time the world expects NVIDIA to launch its next generation GeForce graphics cards and to say that there is a hype train right now would be an understatement. I'm confident in saying this is the most anticipated graphics card launch of all time, and now we're an inch closer to that launch with NVIDIA unveiling the next-gen Turing GPU architecture at SIGGRAPH 2018.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is here. It's big, bold, powerful, pricey, wields an S Pen and makes no apologies for its curvaceous and bodacious exterior. Is it a worthy successor in one of Samsung's most successful flagship product lines? We'll try to answer that question here, but as it turns out, the new Note 9 is more about evolutionary refinement, than it is revolutionary new features. And that, as you'll see, is likely just fine for most Android phone enthusiasts.

New references have been discovered within Steam and shared on Reddit. These references indicate that Valve may be implementing compatibility tools that “allow you to play games from your library that were built for other operating systems”. It looks like there will be several options available too, allowing users to force compatibility for all games, or just limit it to ones that have been specifically verified.

On the surface, this sounds like a form of Wine wrapper, which has been used in the past to get Windows games running on Mac and Linux with varying degrees of success. I’ve only ever tried this technique myself once with Skyrim on a MacBook. With Valve’s backing, a lot of the hassle would be taken out of the equation, although issues may still persist for some games.